


Captives

by Sera_Clay



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 15:26:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3072947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sera_Clay/pseuds/Sera_Clay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lizzington, hurt/comfort, romance, angst, implied torture. Currently a one shot.</p><p>No profit, no harm, no foul.</p><p>Happy New Year, Red X Lizzie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Captives

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedandLizzie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedandLizzie/gifts).



Red hears the clank of metal gates that means someone is coming to visit him. He rises from his seat on the cold metal floor and pulls on the stained, stinking gray jumpsuit that is the only clothing in his small cell.

If it's another round of interrogators, he won't be dressed for long. Red sits on the edge of the hard bench that serves him for a bed, clasps his bruised fingers together, and waits.

The last bang, the heavy door he has seen only once, more than three months ago, when he was dragged here in shackles.

Not allowing him to walk certainly made their point.

Light burns high overhead on the ceiling outside his cell, day and night, and the water spout on the wall alternates unpredictably between icy cold and steaming hot. 

The molded metal toilet backs up into his cell sporadically, he assumes on command, then drains away through a small hole in the floor, which is rimmed with dried blood.

He's had all the time in the world to imagine who might walk through that door, but he never imagined it would be Lizzie.

Lizzie, in a fresh gray jumpsuit, legs and sleeves rolled up to the measure of her smaller frame. Her dark hair has been shaved as short as his own; they hold him down and shave his head and beard at regular intervals. Sometimes other parts of his body as well. 

Her blue eyes rise to meet his for only a brief instant, then she looks down at the floor again.

The armed men on either side of her thrust her onto hands and knees, urge her with well placed kicks to crawl through the low cage of a tunnel that is the only entry into Red's cell when the outer wall is down.

The outer wall is so heavy, the steel bars so thick, that it takes three men to slide it up, to allow access to the locked gate the interrogators use.

Four more guards, armed with automatic weapons, stand watching her crawl inside.

The low door to the tunnel bangs shut and they lock it down.

Then they leave, not bothering to watch Red's reaction to Lizzie's arrival.

There's no reason to stay. Everything in the cell is being captured on film from multiple angles.

"Hello, Lizzie" says Red.

She remains on hands and knees for a moment, rises to her feet with a grimace of pain. Looks around the cell, up at the ceiling.

"I'm sorry, Red."

That's the last thing he would have expected to hear her say. She's just standing there looking at him, her eyes glistening. One side of her face is a little lopsided, swollen, the blue shadows pooling at her jaw not the only evidence of a recent beating. Liz is taking shallow breaths, twitching as if each one hurts her.

"What can you possibly have done to owe me an apology?"

"You do know you're here because of Ressler's disappearance?"

He nods shortly.

"I tried one too many times to convince them you had nothing to do with it." Liz licks her lips, her eyes searching his face. He wishes he knows what she's looking for - he'd give it to her in an instant. "Now they think I was involved, as well. They believe they have proof."

Red tilts his head to one side. "Planted evidence?"

She nods her shaven head. There's a long scratch over her left ear, beaded with dots of dried blood. "Makes Tom's box look like amateur work. They've taken all the evidence I was gathering to exonerate you, they claim it's all fake. Compromised."

Red slides over and pats the bench beside him.

"Come sit down, Lizzie," he says. "Tell me all about it."

She looks up at the cameras. He follows her gaze and shrugs.

"Everything we say is being recorded. Perhaps someone with a bit more judgment will watch the tapes and reconsider our involvement, some day."

Lizzie limps to the bench and sits on the very edge, as far away from him as she can. Red can't really blame her; there's no shower in the cell, no soap.

"Have you been in here the whole time?" she asks. She's looking down at her hands. Her nails are torn short, her delicate wrists are scarred with angry red rope burns.

"Yes, it's been most unpleasant. No view at all, and the food is uniformly terrible."

Liz turns her head at that, and smiles at Red, and his eyes sting unexpectedly. At least he can still make her smile.

He can do pompous all night. Red is pretty sure it's night; his most recent meal contained meat. Unidentifiable, scorched, but protein.

"At least we're together" says Liz. Her tone twists the words into mockery.

"Lizzie?"

What have they been trying to get her to admit? Some personal connection between them other than her past, some intimacy that has never existed outside of Red's most private imagination?

It's beyond what Berlin was made to suffer. They're going to break his Lizzie in front of him. No matter what he tells them.

But first, she'll be forced to watch them degrade him. 

And they'll never let either of them go.

"Oh, Red."

Her shoulders hunch. She seems to have reached the end of her endurance, and beyond.

"It's fine to cry, Lizzie," he says, hearing the roughness in his own voice as he slides over on the bench, reaches out and pulls her against him, turns her face into his filthy shoulder to hold her as she begins to weep. "In here, we're both going to cry, and we're going to beg, and we're going to scream."

Red holds her tighter, stroking her back very gently.

"Because we're human beings, and we want to live, and we won't stop hoping, we won't give up believing that this will end, that we'll feel sunlight and rain again, that Ressler is alive, that there's a marvelous unknown future out there for us both, a future we can't see right now, a future where all wrongs are righted ..."

Murmuring softly, Red sits and gentles Liz down into sleep, safe in his strong arms, if only for a little while.


End file.
